Elections and complications.

AFTER a nail-biting race, the Turkish election appears to be headed towards a run-off poll, with neither candidate able to secure 50 per cent of the vote. The electoral rules in the presidential system were put in place by the then Turkish prime minister (subsequently president) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is one of the candidates. The run-off election will be held on May 28. Until then, the fate of Turkey hangs in the balance. The country, which has borne the brunt of a major catastrophe this year, will have to wait at least two more weeks before its future is known. At the end of the recent round, Erdogan had won 49.5pc of the vote while the opposition parties had won 44.89pc.

The Turkish election is just one among many tests for electoral institutions around the world. With the global economy in a state of flux, the seemingly unstoppable conflict between Russia and Ukraine, growing hazards of climate change and post Covid economic woes, a large part of the global population is confronting difficult choices at the ballot box. Even beyond the actual choices between parties and candidates, the very nature of democratic institutions appears to be in question.

For instance, in the US, where democracy once seemed unassailable, doubts regarding voting machines, the allegiances of electoral officials and corruption exposes involving supreme court judges are all suggesting major problems ahead.

This is because the legitimacy of elections relies on procedures and rules of the voting exercise. When the voting public believes that the polls are fair, the people selected are seen as the legitimate and rightful rulers and lawmakers of a country.

If things are so dire in advanced democracies, the disarray in our neck of the woods is even messier.

One example of how elections can lose their legitimacy among significant swathes of the population was evident in the last US presidential elections. The fact that former president Donald Trump did not accept the election results and that he and his followers continue to believe that the election was 'stolen' from them translates to a crisis of legitimacy that will be difficult to resolve even when the next electoral cycle begins.

One small victory against the power of the losers who are attacking the legitimacy of the polls was witnessed recently when Dominion - the maker of voting machines - sued the pro-Trump Fox News for saying that its poll equipment had rigged the 2020 elections by stealing Trump's votes...